I never liked the idea of wookiees having claws in the first place.
There is no evidence in the films.

It seems like something someone thought would be a good idea; "They live in trees? Claws would help them climb..." (Lots of primates climb just fine without climbing claws)

Which led to the problem of why they were never seen, considering they would be pretty effective when used by such a robust and powerful species.

"Oh...well...it's really dishonourable to do it in a fight. No one would respect you."

I tend to think restrictions like that would fall by the wayside when fighting the Empire that was enslaving your species.

Dredwulf60 wrote:

But to just give wookiees claws as an afterthought and decide they can't use them...

I agree with Dredwulf. Wookiees weren't shown to have claws in the films. Zahn is the author who added them just because he thought Wookiees should have them, but then had to create a reason why they were never used in the films so came up with the honor thing. They don't serve any real purpose because primates don't need climbing claws to be good climbers. Hands with opposable thumbs (which Wookiees have) are very helpful for climbing too. So the whole climbing claws/forbidden/honor thing is a lot of trouble to go through when it would just be easier to say there aren't claws and Wookiees are good climbers anyway. Wookiees already have high Strength which gives them a higher default to Climb skill roles.

I also did away with the berserker rage rules for Wookiees. I'm not saying Wookiees don't tend to get angry when their friends are in danger, but that is a story factor for me and doesn't need game mechanics to say when the character rages and how they can be calmed down._________________*
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Agreed, which is why I didn't argue that Wookiees don't have claws just because they weren't seen in the films. If you put that sentence back in the context of my post, my point is that the whole honor thing is a contrivance for Wookiees not using claws they don't actually even need in the first place. IMO not everything Zahn invents is pure gold.

Who knows? Maybe Solo will show Wookiee claws and maybe I'll want to adopt that into my personal canon. But so far, I haven't seen any compelling reason for Wookiees to have climbing claws._________________*
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Which led to the problem of why they were never seen, considering they would be pretty effective when used by such a robust and powerful species.

"Oh...well...it's really dishonourable to do it in a fight. No one would respect you."

I tend to think restrictions like that would fall by the wayside when fighting the Empire that was enslaving your species.

You're not the only one that held that opinion...

Whill wrote:

I also did away with the berserker rage rules for Wookiees. I'm not saying Wookiees don't tend to get angry when their friends are in danger, but that is a story factor for me and doesn't need game mechanics to say when the character rages and how they can be calmed down.

I like the berseker rage thing, but always felt it should me more akin to how other game systems handled being beserkered. Where you couldn't tell friend from foe, and fought as long as 'there was someone to fight' in view.._________________It's Not who you kill, but how they die!
You cannot dodge it if you do not know it is coming, and you cannot hit it if you do not know its there.

Yeah, the whole "Wookiees have claws" thing was shot down for me for good when I saw Chewie planting the bombs at the thermal oscillator in TFA. There's a particular shot of Chewie (or Joonas Suotamo as Chewie, if you prefer) with the camera focused on his hand planting a bomb on a bulkhead at about head level. You can clearly see that Chewie has human(-like) fingers through the Chewbacca makeup without a hint of anything that could be considered claws. Even the fingernails are clearly visible.

Funny thing about that is they made sure to give Snoke claws. If you watch the Snoke/Andy Serkis Special Feature in the TLJ Bluray, you can clearly see Serkis wearing clawlike prosthetics over his hands when Snoke/Serkis grabs Rey's head during his breaking speech to her. Granted, this is justified by Snoke not being human, but its still pretty jarring to see that they thought of this detail for Snoke in TLJ but not for Chewie in TFA._________________Sutehp's RPG Goodies
Only some of it is for D6 Star Wars.
Just repurchased the X-Wing and Tie Fighter flight sim games. I forgot how much I missed them.

Granted, this is justified by Snoke not being human, but its still pretty jarring to see that they thought of this detail for Snoke in TLJ but not for Chewie in TFA.

Sharp claw nails is much more fitting for the Snoke character than Chewbacca. It makes him more hideous.

Sutehp wrote:

Yeah, the whole "Wookiees have claws" thing was shot down for me for good when I saw Chewie planting the bombs at the thermal oscillator in TFA. There's a particular shot of Chewie (or Joonas Suotamo as Chewie, if you prefer) with the camera focused on his hand planting a bomb on a bulkhead at about head level. You can clearly see that Chewie has human(-like) fingers through the Chewbacca makeup without a hint of anything that could be considered claws. Even the fingernails are clearly visible.

I'm with you 100%, but I think that some fans imagine the claws to be completely concealed and magically appear somewhere out of nowhere kinda like Wolverine, so that TFA close-up of Chewie's normal fingernails probably won't deter them from believing in Wookiee Claws._________________*
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The way i've always envisioned the claws, are akin more to how bears have theirs, but are retractable to between their fingers.._________________It's Not who you kill, but how they die!
You cannot dodge it if you do not know it is coming, and you cannot hit it if you do not know its there.

I'm not trying to be mean but what part of "Disney threw out everything but the 6 feature length films" do people not get?

Everything but the (now 10) core films is gone. Some of it may be re-introduced at Disney's whims. The climbing claws were always weird though. If they re-introduce the claws and fail to re-introduce the law against using them in combat, they can do that. They can re-release the old films with Leia or R2-D2 digitally removed from the canon if they want to. A bunch of suits can change the canon however they want, whenever they want, so be careful about your relationship to canon.

While I am annoyed at Disney, I will give them a pass for two reasons. One of my reasons will be offensive to some readers so I will omit it. The other reason is, without the Star Tours gift shop, being jam-packed with West End products as it was, I might never have succeeded in my quest to get into Star Wars gaming. I got the 1st edition RPG rulebook for Christmas one year and other than that, living in a rural area, I was pretty much marooned away from gaming-civilization. Till we started traveling to Florida regularly. So Disney really did a lot for my personal Star Wars hobby which I can't overlook.

Yes. Here it discusses that Chewie killed a FO stormtrooper after Han died in TFA junior novelization.

Does this make Cheiwe a madclaw?

Or are the nuances in their honor code on using the claws?

It seems that in Legends that would make him a "madclaw", but TFA does not exist in Legends. And according to Wookieepedia the term madclaw does not exist in canon. Yet anyway.

TauntaunScout wrote:

The climbing claws were always weird though. If they re-introduce the claws and fail to re-introduce the law against using them in combat, they can do that.

Good news. The link I posted above ("Here") goes to the canon page for the Wookiee Honor Code. The same canon source that re-introduced Wookiee claws (TFA junior novel) also re-introduced the law against using them.

TauntaunScout wrote:

I'm not trying to be mean but what part of "Disney threw out everything but the 6 feature length films" do people not get?

Everything but the (now 10) core films is gone. Some of it may be re-introduced at Disney's whims.

Not to be mean but that wasn't even true in April of 2014 when the reboot was announced, and it certainly is far from true now. The 6 live action theatrical movies, TCW "movie", and 129 episodes of TCW TV series were insta-canonized in 2014. In the past four years tons of EU continuity has been re-canonized and thus, it is not gone. And not just for references in stories - Canon reference books have re-canonized aspects of the EU for no other reason but to fill in space with text to sell books. Did we really need Duloks in canon? They have yet to appear in a canon story, but for some reason they pointedly do exist in the canon universe.

TauntaunScout wrote:

While I am annoyed at Disney, I will give them a pass for two reasons. One of my reasons will be offensive to some readers so I will omit it...

Sorry. I never watched TCW so if they were kept in it would have slipped my mind.

But if stuff is in and out and in again, it makes the point. Don't take canon (or perceived breaches in it) too seriously, you can't control it.

Based on real world cultures, I have a hard time believing the Wookie honor code would play out the way people say. Knights and samurai and everyone else frequently got away with throwing codes of behavior under the bus if it there was enough to gain from doing so. But, on the other hand, it's space opera not reality. Black and white codes work well for creating satisfying RPG sessions.

Sorry. I never watched TCW so if they were kept in it would have slipped my mind.

But if stuff is in and out and in again, it makes the point. Don't take canon (or perceived breaches in it) too seriously, you can't control it.

Based on real world cultures, I have a hard time believing the Wookie honor code would play out the way people say. Knights and samurai and everyone else frequently got away with throwing codes of behavior under the bus if it there was enough to gain from doing so. But, on the other hand, it's space opera not reality. Black and white codes work well for creating satisfying RPG sessions.

Two things keep an honor code enforced... outcry against breaches, and an inability to ignore consequences.

Consider Zaalbar (my only real encounter with the madclaw stricture). He used his claws against Chundaar, his brother, in anger in finding out that his brother was selling people to Czerka. His father, Freyyr, did not believe Z's accusations, so Zaalbar was powerless to prevent his exile.

Fast forward a few years, and Big Z shows up with Revan in tow. Now, they have proof that Chundaar was dealing with the slavers. Zaalbar STILL used his claws, all those years ago, but the evidence of Chundaar's dealings is enough to make everyone willing to forget about it. Zaalbar still committed the unforgivable sin... but he's forgiven, anyway._________________"I’m telling you, you’ll never have a deeper sleep than curled up in a Wookie’s lap."
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